Institute in Education at Northeastern UniversityALAN STOSKOPF is the Academic Specialist for Social Sciences and Humanities in the Institute in Education at Northeastern University. His most recent research is on how the ethical and emotional dimensions of adolescent students' thinking influence their intellectual understanding
of history.

This article focuses on the public and Catholic school discourse that accompanied the introduction of IQ testing in the early 20th century. It analyzes the nature of the discourse among educational researchers, administrators, and teachers in two parallel educational settings and examines the way that public and Catholic school educators responded to IQ testing.